USPTO Teams with Google to Provide Bulk Patent and Trademark Data to the Public

Washington - Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) David Kappos announced today that the USPTO has entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form. Under this agreement, the USPTO is providing Google with existing bulk, electronic files, which Google will host without modification for the public free of charge. This bulk data can be accessed at www.google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html.

The USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format that is desired by the intellectual property (IP) community. This arrangement is to serve as a bridge as the USPTO develops an acquisition strategy which will allow the USPTO to enter into a contract with a contractor to retrieve and distribute USPTO patent and trademark bulk public data. The contractor will be capable of acquiring this bulk data and providing it to the public.

"The USPTO is committed to providing increased transparency as called for by the president's Open Government Initiative. An important element of that transparency is making valuable public patent and trademark information more widely available in a bulk form so companies and researchers can download it for analysis and research," said Under Secretary Kappos. "Because the USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to offer the data in bulk form from our own Web site, we have teamed with Google to provide the data in a way that is convenient and at no cost for those who desire it."

"We're happy to work with the USPTO to make patent and trademark data more accessible and useful," said Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google. "It's important to make public data easier to gather and analyze. And when the data is free, that's even better."

Until now, USPTO's public data in bulk form has been provided solely as a fee-based service. The USPTO estimates that nearly ten terabytes of information will be made available. Examples of the type of data that will be available through Google include:

Patent grants and published applications

Trademark applications

Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) proceedings

Patent classification information

Patent maintenance fee events

Patent and Trademark assignments

The USPTO and Google will be working together to make additional data available in the future, including patent and trademark file histories and related data.